1960s - the New Model Army

Rex Walford tackled the changing nature of Geography in the 60's in a pieece called 'On the frontier with the New Model Army" published in 'Geography'.


This was a part of a short series which was put together by Chris Kington, along with pieces by Balchin and Tidswell.

The original piece is available in 'Geography'.

He also wrote a chapter with the same name with his book on School Geography teaching which has been a major source when writing this blog.
There is also detail on this era in the Marsden textbook on... textbooks which I was loaned by Chris Kington.
This was "a watershed in academic geography, chiefly reflected in the dramatic shift from traditional regional to the more mathematical and scientic approaches of the so-called quantitative revolution" (Marsden, p.44)

Rex Walford described the regional approach by them as being "too static, too pat, too enclosed", although it persisted, as I taught it in the late 80s still. Key textbooks at this time included those by Everson and Fitzgerald, and one by J P Cole & N J Beynon 'New Ways in Geography', which sold over 300 000 copies of the pupil books and even more of the work packs between 1969 and 1984. The series pioneered some new ideas such as disposable worksheets. It replaced the traditional exploration of life in other lands with skills development on such things as networks, coordinates, journey patterns and kocations.

The Madingley lectures of 1963 led to the release of Chorley and Haggett's 'Frontiers in Geographical Teaching' (1965) and 'Models in Geography' (1967). These were the bibles of what Rex called the 'new model army' of teachers.
In Balchin's Centenary book he talks about the impact of the quantitative revolution on the GA, which he describes as a 'danger'.
It was starting to affect teaching in schools. Quantitative techniques were apparently embraced by younger students, but viewed critically by 'the establishment'. A new GA committee was eventually formed in 1967 called the 'Role of Models and Quantitative Techniques in Geographical Teaching', which was chaired by Professor Stan Gregory.

A full issue of 'Geography' in January 1969 was devoted to the work of this committee.

More to come on this as the blog moves through the 1960s.

References
Walford, Rex. “On the Frontier with the New Model Army: Geography Publishing from the 1960s to the 1990s.”
Geography, vol. 74, no. 4, 1989, pp. 308–320. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571739
Balchin's Centenary volume

Images in this post:
Peter Haggett (top)
Dick Chorley (bottom) - link to Cambridge Obituary

Another name associated with this period is William Vaughan Lewis.

It is worth finding and reading Haggett's own reflections on the Quantitative Revolution, which are found in this document (a useful 17 page PDF download for free) - several other former GA Presidents get a mention in this document.